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Val Masino March 2014 - Chris Muench

March 24, 2014 -
Muench

I just returned last Monday from a nice, 10 days long trip to Val Masino with perfect granite, cool people and super good weather.

In the beginning I felt a bit uncomfortable, because I had just recovered from a terrible back pain and was not sure what the holidays would bring. Also Leo started into the trip with pain in his finger. After that I had to invest quite a bit of skin for getting an ascent of “Il Vampiro” (FB 7c). Nevertheless – two beautiful lines!!!To finish the day, we drove back to a sector right next to our holiday flat and I climbed “Terminato” (FB 7b+), a boulder that my flat mate back home had recommended to me.

On the second day, we didn’t use a car at all, just walking around in the area around our flat. And in fact, there are really cool problems in the sector “Tarzan”. Kind of warming up with the stand start of “Il Brutto” (FB 8a), which turned out to be a pretty hard 7a, I stayed a bit longer to also try the sit start and was lucky enough to get my second FB 8a of the trip before lunch. After that, I tried on “Sex appeal” together with Moritz a bit, but we decided that this is not one that we want to work in the sun and so we went to “Il Sogno di Tarzan”. I had done the stand start of that perfect line a some years ago. And because Moritz wanted to try it, I did the sit start here, which adds another two moves, making an FB 7c out of a 7b+. And also Moritz could do the stand start some days later – nice one!!! After that pretty exhausting session, I did another two 7b’s on the way back to the flat - one awesome prow and one nicely dynamic move - and was looking forward to the first rest day.

This rest day, I invested to search for some potential projects for the next climbing days and even though (maybe because) we didn’t find every boulder on my list, I had a long and cool hike through the forest together with our renter Marco, who had offered to show me the region – what a nice guy. And not enough with this, Marco’s mother cooked a dinner typical for the region for us in the evening. So delicious, so nice!

The day after our rest day, I woke up pretty early as I was keen to try the boulders that I found together with Marco. Some easy things to get warm and already at 10 am, I found myself sitting on top of “Il Petomane - B” (FB 8a) with a big smile on my face, enjoying the sun that just got into the valley. The rest of the day I was not too focused anymore, trying this and that on my way back to sector “Tarzan”, where I met Leo trying “Il Brutto” – which he sent the day after, compliments here!!! Thus, I stayed with him and Marie for the rest of the day and got really pumped in a flash of “Kamasutra” (7c trav.). After that, I worked an edge round the corner that we couldn't find in our guide book which should be somewhere between 7a and 7b. But I was pretty much done for the day anyway and the edge was in the sun as well, so I decided to come back some days later in the evening together with Johannes. And surprise, it was a lot easier in the shade and with a good solution…

On the next climbing day, I returned to “Il Petomane” and did also the 7c exit to finish the whole boulder and also because it’s an awesome line. During the rest of our trip, I tried a lot of boulders and for some of them I would be happy to return some day as I got really close, but couldn’t finish them. And also to try the lines that I couldn’t work because time was just too short…

The last day, after the last tries on some open projects, I invested in climbing easier problems, enjoying the moves on granite rock in this nice place. I had so much fun during these 10 days - thanks for that to our crew J! During the next weeks, I will probably only be able to climb on the weekends I guess, but still I am full of motivation, maybe also for some routes now…